The Viewable Unimpressive; IAB Tag Comment

The debate over the value of viewable impressions as a metric for online branding campaigns is endless at the moment. Following the Media Ratings Council’s preliminary conclusion that viewable impressions aren’t all that viewable right now, Mitch Weinstein, SVP, director of ad operations at Universal McCann, writing on the shop’s blog, offers what he calls “the agency perspective” on the whole thing. While he sees viewable impressions eventually becoming the “cornerstone of the industry,” there’s a lot of complexity to address before ground can be broken. “Until such time where methodologies and technologies become more consistent through audits and certifications, it will be difficult to use the Viewable count as the basis for billing. In the meantime, the publishers and agencies getting an early jump on the technology will set the pace and tone for the rest of the industry.” Read more.

Speak to the Marketer

The ad tech ecosystem is way too obsessed with buying mechanisms and price, Digilant CEO Ed Montes writes in a Mediapost column. “It’s imperative for marketers to understand that today’s RTB and programmatic environments are immature, with significantly too much focus placed on bidding and price rather than marketing and communication outcomes.” More.

Commenting On Tags

The IAB wants You. That is if you want to provide a comment on best practices for site tagging and “alleviate industry-wide complexities.” A helpful list of pain points are identified that publishers are managing today: “User abandonment; Negative customer experience; Performance impact; Operational strain; Unintended transfer of data; Privacy issues.” Read the release. And, see the site tagging site.

Testing Direct Sales

On Digiday, Brian Morrissey asks industry execs if Federated Media’s move away from direct sales for display and toward programmatic is a pivotal moment for the industry at-large. Tremor’s head seller Jason Krebs is not convinced as he says, “It doesn’t matter what program digital marketers are actually buying as 80 percent of all dollars are being used to deliver more friends, fans, tweets, followers, likes, shares, views or clicks.” Read more.

Facebook Vs Google, Round 384

On Wired, Google social VP Bradley Horowitz takes a few swings at Facebook as Google amps up its competition with the social giant. Horowitz tells Wired, “We launched to a lot of skepticism and I will be the first to admit in the wake of Orkut and Blogger and Buzz and Wave, the world had a right to be skeptical about Google. When we said this was different, people didn’t necessarily believe us…. What I think has happened in the intervening year [is] the world has changed a lot. And whereas a year ago, we may have been accused of wanting to be Facebook, it’s clear to the world now that Google would not want that outcome…” Read it.

Aegis’ China Deal

It’s getting harder for Western media shops to find scalable digital agencies in China to acquire, but Aegis has been able to snap up OMP, one of that country’s few remaining large independents. OMP will be connected with Aegis’ search specialist shop Isobar. "OMP is a media-centric, full-service digital marketing company that will help Isobar gain further digital media scale in China, as well as get senior Chinese talents in servicing local and international clients,” said Jean Lin, Isobar's CEO, Asia-Pacific, in a statement to "Thoughtful China,” according to AdAge’s Normandy Madden. Read more.

Outbrain Outreach

Marketers realized years ago that the Hispanic community represented the fastest growing consumer segment. And with more ad dollars, comes more content (and vice versa). Content marketing specialist Outbrain is expanding its existing partnership with Univision to help the Spanish-language media company drive up its pageviews. “This extension will generate a new revenue stream that benefits our audience, while meeting the rising interest from our advertisers," said Charlie Echeverry, executive vice president, Interactive Media Sales, Univision Interactive. Read the release.